Reverse Mentor

You need a reverse mentor: someone to escort you proudly into
the new economy with dash, panache, and elan, even if they've
never heard those words. You provide the insights of years of
work experience, and your mentor provides a year's subscription
to fabulousness.

Dear Annette,

Twentysomethings have taken over the office where I have
been working since they were in elementary school. It seems
that everyone has a navel ring except me. Can I stay hip
without subjecting myself to the needle?

Experienced but Inexperienced

Dear Experienced,

Many employees over a certain age feel anxious about the
correlation between computers in the cradle and rings in the
navel. Alas, and yet hooray: the future belongs to the
children, and to the people who were children only recently.

What you need is a reverse mentor: someone to escort you
proudly into the new economy with dash, panache, and elan,
even if they've never heard those words. It's an equitable
exchange: you provide access to the insights of years or even
decades of work experience, and your mentor provides a year's
subscription to fabulousness.

Find the most outrageously styled newcomer in your office,
the one who seems the most dangerous. I gravitate toward the
pouty petulant young things, the ones who don't say much, the
snowboarders who look like they are about to punch or stalk
or cry. They have the best creative insights and that eagle
eye for detail that lets you know they're watching. You
usually find them in IT or design.

My mentor - let's call him R. - has taught me
everything I know about navel rings. Many more people
have them than you know - indeed, every workplace has a
piercing policy, written or not. Even in the typical
financial services firm there is likely to be someone
covering up. Reverse mentors can name names.

In offices where employees out their outies, the issues are
what to wear, how often to change it, how much to show, and
the meta-game of whether to draw attention by playing with or
mentioning the accessory. Conventional wisdom says, downplay
but expect questions. I can't imagine a context where
diamonds would be a no-no.

At work one sees only the outcome of the piercing, but the
process apparently is the great joy. When you and your mentor
have begun to trust one another, ask for the story. Not only
will the answer entertain you, but it will show you are
catching on.